


contents may ignite without pressure

by takethisasuwill



Series: post-war Newt triptych [1]
Category: Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: First Kiss, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Newton Geiszler Has ADHD, Not Pacific Rim: Uprising (2018) Compliant, Post-Operation Pitfall (Pacific Rim), Uprising? Yeah idk her
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-10
Updated: 2020-09-10
Packaged: 2021-03-07 01:33:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,468
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26398714
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/takethisasuwill/pseuds/takethisasuwill
Summary: A forced reevaluation of priorities. The sensation of a seat belt locking.The end of the war brings an abrupt halt to what Newt has been fixating on for years. It will not be a gentle transition.
Relationships: Newton Geiszler/Hermann Gottlieb
Series: post-war Newt triptych [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1918645
Comments: 2
Kudos: 36
Collections: Pacific Rim Bingo 2020





	contents may ignite without pressure

**Author's Note:**

> This is for the Hurt/Comfort Square of the Pacific Rim 2020 Bingo Challenge that happened this summer. Regrettably, life got in the way of an actual timely posting. So now here we are in September.  
> Any necessary warnings will be in the end notes, along with some author exposition.  
> Shout to my sister for some editing & science stuff help. She'll never see this.

  
It’s been six weeks.

Six weeks since the clock was stopped. Since the Shatterdome’s frenzied activity took on a different flavor. Finality. Two - three? - weeks of being back in Boston. His ancestral home. It doesn’t feel quite right to Newt, he keeps having to recontextualize himself in a space that he thought was familiar. One step out of touch is not a new feeling for Newt. But he chose Boston, he wheedled and pitched and compromised Boston, and it stings to now feel like a puzzle piece that has switched around its grooves. He wonders if he could convince Hermann to drop his job and flee to Europe, ditch the promise of the upcoming tours and interviews and pick up the pace of life where it had dropped off so suddenly in Hong Kong. 

He’s not sure how he managed to swing Hermann’s presence in Boston. Despite all the pinched faces and faux-British indignance Hermann made at the idea of dwelling in lowly Massachusetts, there was never any serious question of them departing to separate destinations. For one, bullshit tape lines to the side, their research had become too intertwined with each other’s to stop now. Much easier to move as a unit. For two, well, Newt’s not really sure yet what for two is. He knows where he’s coming from. He knows that his sanguine streaked iris has a match in Hermann’s, that he has started to drink classy little espressos in the morning instead of dumping four Splendas into his cold brew, that Hermann hasn’t been screeching as loudly and genuinely as he used to in response to Newt’s music. 

And now he’s wondering, after the ordeal of cajoling each other into a suitable apartment, if he can compress it all until combustion occurs, supernova his own reality and keep running. Because that’s what he did for ten-odd years. Full tilt, pounding the ground, running on empty in a dead sprint; a race against time and creation and whatever other natural power was on tap that day. 

But that time has passed, and the thrumming in Newt’s veins doesn’t seem as if it’ll stay forever, despite the lingering excitement-anxiety that the danger is not really over. Who’s to say that when one breach closes god doesn’t open a window, that there’s not another fissure evil-eying its way open to spit fury right now. With each passing week another layer of distance dampens these worries. Personal unfulfillment ignored for a moment, it is fascinating to see an entire world begin to unclench its jaw. Newt’s molars, however, remain welded shut. He jitters around the space with his shoulders filamented through with iron, ping-ponging from barren living room to functional kitchen. He makes three different types of bibimbap in two nights and does _not_ unpack. 

Three more days pass before he frays open. He knows it was only a matter of time. Newt doesn’t patch his wounds like Hermann does, neat bandages keeping everything inside in. When Newt unravels, he goes for broke, rebirths himself out of the ashes. This isn’t to say he stops, of course. Newt never learned how to stop and wasn’t afforded the luxury during the war. He’s the flaming runaway locomotive to Hermann’s steady bailing shipwreck. This all goes to say that it is Day Who Knows of Week Fucking Six; he’s running on a nap, Monster supplemented Vyvanse, and something akin to a prayer. He’s sitting on the bad pleather couch that came with the apartment; trying not to twitch himself through the wall as he talks across the room to Hermann. 

“I’m just saying that, like, I definitely had more fun teaching here the last time around. Breaking it down, I can tell where the deficits lie though. I went to more parties the first time around and if the amount of side-eye I got then follows a positive correlation with time passed, age reached - whatever - I think I’d be laser-eyed into a scorch mark on opening the door. Not that you can appreciate a good party. Any bona fide barnburners better maintain their distance from your wet blanket ass.” 

The truth is, of course, that Newt was not particularly welcome at any given house party but managed to get into them anyway. His usual MO was to down as much juice as he could stick to, play - badly - a few rounds of pong or slap cup, and try to fidget his songs into the playlist. 

“But how do you think this tour’s gonna shape up? God I hope they put us up in the good hotels, none of that three-star shit, we’re celebrities now.” 

Newt intends to be focused solely on annoying Hermann on theorizing ad infinitum until Hermann snaps; but he keeps getting caught on Hermann’s sweater - grey, lumpy, objectively brimming with octogenarian spirit - on the idea of trying to fit himself up under it, on making this apartment a Russian nesting doll of homes-for-two. He’s started an ongoing campaign of theft since move-in, seeing how many of those sweaters he can nab, layering them over the t-shirts he’s broken out in abundance but for which the Bostonian weather is too unforgiving. A leather jacket does not suitable winter wear make. Hermann hasn’t said anything yet about the thievery nor has he been pulling the expected facial gymnastics in response. Instead it’s intensified that undercurrent that’s been building since the Drift, and maybe even before, something much softer than either party is really comfortable with after lifetimes of armoring all weak spots. 

"Wait, they better put us in the same hotel as everyone. I mean, I’m sure they will, the military-industrial complex has money to burn after the end of the end times. But wouldn’t that be wild though? If we were shunted off into, like, a seedy hostel while everyone else lives it up. Shaking up a box of eggs while Top Dog Herc and his top dog get prime rib to order. While-” 

At last, Hermann breaks. “Could you refrain from jabbering for a moment? I understand you are functionally a wind-up toy spliced together with a newborn. But is there nothing else you can put your attention towards besides irrelevant speculation?” 

Newt’s next inhale stutters, his subsequent exhale comes in a harsh choked off rush. Because that’s the crux of the matter. What to put his attention towards. His samples were not confiscated in the formal execution of the word. But he knows well enough that the military closed that door and unless there’s an agenda for him to fulfill he will never be seeing them again. They won’t take his research, maybe can’t. Sometimes it pays to be the craziest motherfucker in the room. But not now, when Newt’s pounding heart is getting the best of him. Not now, as he fumbles at the railway switch and misses his turnoff - typical. He’s had to slow, fall into the stop-start motions of reaching towards something and finding it less substantial than promised. He’s had to decelerate. 

The kaiju gave him something to hold onto, however fucked up that was, and that mat had been yanked from under his already unsteady feet. Seeing the last die, hearing secondhand accounts of a world’s destruction, shaking himself awake to cerulean and cyan echoes. Forging a new purpose is not as righteous as it looks to be. He had anchored himself in the Breach and its closure had snipped the chain like a broadsword going up against some dental floss. He finds himself - humor and nausea battling in him over the word choice how much irony is too much - adrift. Anyone who thought two-maybe-three weeks would be enough to get himself on even footing before taking off around the world has never seen him in action. 

But now, trying to remember what he meant to steer this conversation into as Hermann tunes his glare into a sharper pitch, he barks out a laugh instead. Funny that maybe the drift itself has given him a new anchor, though one just as likely to drag him into oncoming ships, to break in the ceiling of what he thinks is safe. 

“Where are we even going, dude? We’re being paraded on show to rehash the same shit again and again. We’re gonna leave Oregon Trail wheel marks on the stage by the time it’s through. Call me braindead at that point because it’s all well and good and teachable and bland. Don’t get me wrong - I mean - you know I actually enjoy teaching, right? I just rag on it because it’s there and an easy target. Fuck academia as a hierarchical concept though. Pretentious shitheads. With their gatekeeping and prohibitively high costs and god what is with-” 

“Newton.” He’s cut off again by Hermann standing from his chair, crossing to where Newt perches at the couch’s edge. Hermann leans into his space, which is weird, because Newt is the invader, the seeker, the gatecrasher. The one that pushes all the buttons and limits in reach just to see what can be set off. 

“What, exactly,” Hermann says, “is your point.” 

Newt’s point is that he’s a rock star now and feels like the price was free excavation privileges of his abdomen. 

“My point is that nothing’s new, dude. I’ve seen the schedule, I know it's hotel room to lecture hall and back again. People will see us just to see us and not give a shit past that. Kaiju research is essentially kaput. No one’s going to fund the postponement of a decade long fever nightmare’s funeral. You’ve seen them all just forgetting, everyone’s burying it and trying to move on and forget. No fucking forethought, man, because this might not be it, there might just be another breach out there preparing to crack this world the fuck open and start spilling kaiju and if we’re not ready who will be? They already tried to shut us down once, and it's so goddamn fake how they’re pedestaling us now that the worst has passed. Jesus, it’s performative.” 

Newt could continue, rant until the sun is down and up again or at least until he shatters completely, but Hermann opens his mouth and Newt surprisingly wants to hear if the good doctor has any good words for once. 

Instead of delivering any words of wisdom, he closes it again, purses his lips; because Hermann, for all the poetry he pretends he doesn’t read, is shit with expressing himself and always has been. But, hey, maybe they don’t need words anyway because there is it again, a radiating emotion through a chink in Hermann’s defense that Newt suspects is self-made. They don’t bare their underbellies without purpose in it. Hermann must want Newt to see this, want him to muster up some emotional intelligence for once and place a thumbtack on the spectrum of the two of them. Newt tries, strains outside himself and his not insignificant capacity to mark down where they’re standing right now. But it's so hard to tell where he ends and Hermann begins in this continuum. They have been running all over the map, foot trails and dotted flight lines and eraser marks, the tangle of it obscuring the greater image. 

Luckily, Newt’s a big picture guy so when it clicks, it _clicks_. He knows Hermann knows Newt knows he knows. Newt sees the recognition in his eyes. Hermann gives a small smile and sways into his space the same way he did in the Shatterdome, their tête-à-tête alignment a notedly critical divergence. 

Given the existent variables, he really has no other choice. Newt sways right back, boiling panic attack be damned, and presses their lips together. He has to half stand to get there, bracing his calves against the couch and clenching his thighs to stay at the right height without plummeting backwards on his own momentum. Black spots spread like ink blots across his vision and he does his best to blink them into exile; he straightens and pushes back the curve of Hermann’s spine. Grabs at Hermann’s sweater and shit, it's heavy and soft and Newt’s absolutely snagging this one the first chance he gets to pilfer from the laundry. And, yeah, maybe it has more to do with the living infuriating body housed in that sweater, but Newt’s done enough emotional legwork today, he’ll save any subsequent realizations for another. He just slides his arms further around Hermann and clenches at the knit. Hermann, for his part, is entirely on board. Which Newt already knew, between the Drift and a veritable supercomputer’s worth of accumulated knowledge on Hermann Gottlieb, but it's reassuring all the same. The urge to climb out of his own skin hasn’t gone away, still making itself known in every pattering untethered thought swirling through his head, but it’s soothed, somewhat, by Hermann making a soft noise into his mouth. Hermann shifts closer, resting one spindly hand gently around the hinge of Newt’s jaw, thumb tucked in front of his ear and other fingers curving around his neck. He traces the edge of Newt’s cheekbone. 

“I didn’t even know you were capable of being sappy, s’like a fucking cheesefest up in here,” Newt mumbles up as they move together. Predictions aren’t steadfast but when you have as much data as they do on each other it's easy, simple really, to adjust around each other. To fall into something deep and warm and-. Hermann bites him, snaps Newt’s bottom lip up between his teeth and sinks in with enough force that Newt thinks he’ll come away bleeding, is kind of hoping he will. Newt jerks back at it and oh, there we go, Hermann’s incisor catching the ragged end of some dry skin and peeling it off. Before Newt can mark Hermann even more crimson then he already has, Hermann pulls back. 

“Would that be preferable to you, then?” He looks smug and Newt can’t tell whose behalf it's on and if that doesn’t just piss him off. 

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Newt launches himself back towards Hermann, bearing his trajectory neck-wards. He finds a patch of skin that looks particularly vulnerable - at the edge of the sweater’s collar where shoulder becomes neck - and bites down. Doesn’t give a shit if it’s going to be visible during the tour, doesn’t give a shit if he bleeds on Hermann. It wouldn’t be the first time and Hermann is steady enough to withstand what he has to offer. Hermann is still holding onto his head and he seems more than amiable to the proceedings as he sweeps along through Newt’s hair. 

Newt doesn’t pull back until he’s swept a small array of bruises across Hermann’s neck, a feat considering after the second Hermann started getting testy. He hadn’t actually bled much on Hermann, though he can taste the potential to as he tongues his lip. He slides his hands below Hermann’s sweater, toying with the fabric around Hermann’s waist, and Hermann is wearing a cotton t-shirt underneath. Which, Hermann doesn’t wear t-shirts, especially not ones as well-worn as what Newt pitches between his fingers. But then again, Newt never used to wear austerely colored sweaters. So he doesn’t mention it. 

What he does do is give in to Hermann’s tugging, taking him further away than he’d like to be from kissing range, truth be told. But it looks like Hermann has reasserted his bearings, steadied his mind in a way that Newt will only ever understand conceptually. The emotion from Hermann is beaming now, a deluge of soft warmth that crosses the space between them, filling Newt’s mind and tracing down his spine. He sways for a moment. 

“Newton... when did you last sleep?” Hermann’s still the edgiest fucker Newt knows, but right now he’s just gazing at Newt. 

“I-I’m. Well. I know for a fact that I slept… a few hours last night?” Newt’s not sure, knows that might be a lie. He doesn’t have anywhere he needs to be, and he certainly doesn’t need a rest from all the nothing he’s been serving up. 

“Liar. I saw you running tests, lord knows on what, and you were still there when you made breakfast.” Hermann retorts. 

“Hey, you don’t know what happened while you were knocked out. I might have called it and laid on the couch.” Hermann doesn’t need to know that Newt was staring down his own DNA for hours, electrophoresing it out, trying to see the differences he could feel. There was - there has been for a while - nothing of note. 

“While that may be true in theory, you forget I know you,” - blatantly false, Newt could never forget - “and since our arrival in Boston you have seemed desperate to run yourself into the ground and irritate me into a similar grave with your efforts. Might I persuade you into taking a night off?” 

Hermann knows that’s not how it works, that Newt’s a frayed live wire and it’s impossible for him to just throw the breaker on his racing rampant psyche. Hermann is aware of this and is offering an insulation to the current. Newt can’t stop when his brain is too much, but he can dampen it. 

Newt grins, knowing the expression is a little wild, shows a few too many teeth to count towards happiness. “You know the grind never stops, dude. But I could be persuaded into switching the grindstone to something more sci-fi based.” Never mind that their entire lives have been a Spielberg movie off the rails for years. 

“I’ll start the Star Trek. You,” Hermann pushes at one of Newt’s shoulders until he drops down onto the couch. “Sit.” 

So, Newt sits. He pulls a blanket over his legs and picks at it as he waits for Hermann. Hermann, in the meantime, gets busy. He speeds over to the kitchen and a few clattering moments later brings back two mugs of tea. The drinks are followed by a bowl of the Newt’s favorite nutritionally bankrupt cereal. It’s artificially neon and marshmallow laden and it brings out a disdainful lemon-sour pout from Hermann every time Newt chows down in front of him. The tea however, is all Hermann, some kind of chamomile-citrus herbal shit whose label Newt has never bothered to retain. 

There are worse things than being cared for, however, and Newt takes a sip of it with a grimace of his own. Hermann has sat down beside him and is leaning forward to attach up the external CD-ROM driver currently housing the second season of Next Gen. They haven’t gotten around to television shopping yet and after a certain amount of wartime emails from streaming services stating “Mr. Geiszler, you’ve forgotten to renew your account with us,” Newt figured why bother. Hermann just happens to own every season of the show. Newt thinks he might have a weird kind of soul-bond with Data, but has never tried to confirm. He taps on an episode that Newt hasn’t seen before and settles back. The moment when Hermann is finished fussing around sees the two of them tucked firmly under the blanket. Newt’s scarfed down his cereal by now; his tea clasped up between chest and bent legs. 

Newt’s fairly certain he could lean over on Hermann, rest his head against the top of that unfairly soft sweater. Based on prior events, that seems like a thing that could work. So he does. Fuck hesitation, it’s never done anything for him. Hermann tenses up when Newt makes landfall but quickly relaxes after that. When Newt gets too twitchy - a phenomenon which takes about an episode and a half to fully set in - Hermann scoffs but reaches an arm over his shoulder and bends it back to place a hand into his hair. While Newt’s hair is admittedly not the cleanest it has ever been it doesn’t appear to stymie Hermann’s movements much. Hermann rubs into his head and neck, releasing a myriad of tensions that Newt wasn’t aware were stored in that area. 

After four episodes Newt wheedles Hermann into watching Jurassic Park. He doesn’t sleep but Hermann does, heavy across his shoulders. The movie fades out and what kind of one-time drift partner five-year lab partner would Newt be if he woke the man draped across him. Hermann does not often fall asleep in places where he doesn’t intend to spend the night. Newt holds a vigil until his body realizes that it’s not going to receive any scintillating new information. His consciousness unmoors. This isn’t the end of course, he’ll need to contend with himself in the morning, figure out how to build new reasons to get up. Newt is by definition frantic, sleepless, unstoppable. But in this given moment, he is safe, he is comfortable, it is dark and he is tired.

**Author's Note:**

> This is a story I wrote after I was sent home from abroad and had to come to terms with the abrupt transition from everything all the time to sitting at home. Newt seemed the perfect character to project my existential mania on.
> 
> Warnings: Blood/Bleeding on people (Mentioned in passing once and barely addressed, but just in case), existential crises, Newt's mindset during this is something akin to manic with a healthy sprinkle of dejected spiraling, he does kiss Hermann in this mindset
> 
> Comments are always welcome! If I missed a warning/typo/etc feel free to let me know and I'll edit this.


End file.
